Lollapalooza Music Festival live updates

Three days of music and fun in the sun (and an evacuation) are in the books for Lollapalooza Music Festival 2012 in Chicago. The Tribune was all over Grant Park, bringing you live updates, reviews, photos and video. Here's our report.

Jack White wrapped up the festival by summing up most of the music that preceded him: surf-into-metal-and-back-again guitar solos, erotic co-ed duets, fiddle and pedal-steel-charged country laments, eerie break-up ballads, twisted blues. And if that weren't enough, Lollapalooza promoters C3 Presents also announced that the festival would expand to a third foreign location next year — Tel Aviv, Israel, joining Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Santiago, Chile.

"Lollapalooza’s first-ever evacuation ran relatively smoothly, said city and concert officials, who kept a close eye on the fast-changing skies. Tens of thousands of fans left Grant Park Saturday afternoon before a thunderstorm hit and then returned in time for evening shows — though what happened in between was less orderly.

About six or seven bands were unable to play because of the evacuation, but Lollapalooza promoter C3 Presents will not make any refunds, spokeswoman Shelby Meade said."

Thunder was the music and lightning the light show for a time this afternoon, causing the suspension and evacuation of the Lollapalooza festival in Grant Park while a powerful storm front moved through the Chicago area.

About 2 1/2 hours later the festival reopened, and the Chicago area began to clean up.

Perhaps the most anticipated hip-hop act of the weekend is local boy Chief Keef, who takes Perry's Stage at 12:15 p.m.

More from Kot: "A late addition to the lineup, teenager Keith Cozart has risen from the South Side’s hip-hop underground to an Interscope record deal on the heels of a monster digital hit, 'I Don’t Like.'"

Avicii will DJ at Paris Club’s upstairs club, Studio Paris, following his Lollapalooza set. … Calvin Harris will DJ at The Mid after his Lollapalooza set. … Dougy Mandagi, lead singer of The Temper Trap, and Chris Kennedy (better known as actor Chris Masterson) will DJ at Nellcote. … Starkillers and The White Panda will perform at the Filter magazine party at Roof in the Wit hotel.

To sum up Lollapalooza's food lineup in terms of its musical headliners, this year's Chow Town roster is less Black Keys (currently hip) and more Ozzy Osbourne (nostalgically hip).

Curated for the last three years by chef Graham Elliot,Lollapalooza's Chow Towns — the name given to the food-vendor areas — have gone from being a cool, cuisine-focused version of Taste of Chicago to, well, Taste of Chicago. Indeed, one-third of this year's participants are current or former Taste vendors. And many of the other vendors, working Lolla for the third straight year, offer more familiarity than excitement.

It’s a ritual by now at Lollapalooza. Once again the Perry’s stage, devoted to DJ’s and electronic music artists, was a sea of pumping fists, pogoing heads and all-around madness Friday.

Germany'sZedd and London’s Nero orchestrated beats that crescendoed every 30 seconds or so. The no-let-up attitude of these electronic dance-music gurus made the decision by promoters C3 Presents to kill last year’s tent and move the stage west of Columbus Drive into an open field a wise one.

Some quick observations from the improved Perry's stage, where Young Bloods got the party started at the break of noon:

After a few years of pretending Perry's was still a sideshow, Lolla has finally made it a main stage, with an imposing LED-clad DJ stand on stage and a pair of speaker/light towers (looking like the skeletons of twin grain silos) out in the crowd, or out where the crowd will be when it fills in later.

The energy is high and the vibe is fun. A clear contrast from last year's atmospheric but claustrophobia-inducing tent, where the vibe was downright fearful at times, Perry's 2012 doesn't sacrifice spectacle and makes Lolla look awful smart for taking the top down.

That said, it'll totally be a mob scene here later. Glad I grabbed a spot in the shade eary. -- Leo Ebersole

"Lolla doesn’t venture outside its comfort zones of rock and electronic music too often, so this Brazilian outfit is definitely worth a look with its blend of reggae, rock, samba and a smidge of hip-hop."

A fan lights up at Pitchfork Mustic Festival in Union Park last month.

Starting Saturday, police will be able to issue $250 tickets for those caught with small amounts of marijuana. And Lollapalooza attracts plenty of fans who enjoy lighting up a joint as part of the concert experience.

But Chicago Police Department officials say the ticketing provision will not apply inside the festival, which takes place on fenced-in grounds at Grant Park. That's because the land is Chicago Park District property. An exception to the new rules means that police will continue to arrest those caught on parkland with less than 15 grams of cannabis, the equivalent of about 25 cigarette-sized joints.